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Late model truck totalled

Monkeywithawrench

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 8, 2019
Messages
281
Location
New Hampshire
Have had a 2014 Western Star dump truck down at work awaiting a PCM since February, Frt Lnr dealer STILL Making lame excuses after calling the boss THREE Times giving a Delivery Date only to be called back and informed NOT Coming. The 2015 I drive limped FOUR Weeks for Lift axle Brake Shoes while DOT played in the neighborhood, STILL Needs Drums but are so far on BO as to be UNOBTANIUM.

BTW, FIVE More days to Returned to Retired.
NICE!! 5 day, how many hours and minutes to go??LOL

Sadly I think the stealerships don't give a crap. The parts are out there...........you just need to find them. Case in point last month I had a customers dump truck that stopped dumping when the bed was part way up. It was a 98 Pete 357 with a front mount pump on an air clutch Chelsea PTO. The output shaft and the input shaft on the pump had fretted down to nothing. Bought a new tandem pump and was unable to source shaft from any Chelsea PTO suppliers. Did a Google search for the part number and found a new Chelsea shaft on Ebay for cheap. Messaged the seller and asked them to over night the part.........they agreed. Took 3 days to get all the parts and 6 hours to get it back together. Took it apart while waiting for the parts.

My biggest complaint is looking up and sourcing the parts. Plenty of times my customers have walked in to find me sitting on my butt in front of my laptops (plural) with my blue tooth earpiece in. "What are you doing??" ............"Looking up parts and trying to find them!!" Most of them get it. I hate it!!
LOL.........I got a Komatsu D39E-1 dozer that the customer wants to put new sprockets on. I called the Komatsu dealer. Their parts guy told me......"We don't sell those. You need to find an aftermarket place."........CLICK. 90% of finding people to deal with is FINDING THE PEOPLE WHO GIVE A F#CK!! THAT IS THE BIGGEST BATTLE!! And I think that's why I have such a big customer base............the give a f#ck factor. Alot of days I'll be doing triage on the fly. Who needs attention and repairs now and who can wait..............it's hard. Sorry, your service is going to have to wait. But I'm 100 hours over due. Yes, I get it.........but other people are down.........your running. If you were down, would you want me jumping on your machine or telling you that you need to wait because I need to change oil?? And they understand and get it.
 

Hallback

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2011
Messages
2,306
Location
Aberdeen Wa.
Occupation
Gyppo tower logger
I think you've completely missed the point on working on a truck versus just making a payment and driving one while they are still under warranty and then trading them in. Yes you can write your time off but you still lost that time, maybe your time's not very valuable to you but mine is to me.

How do you see I'm giving my time away for free?? I track time and expenses on parts..........that gets written off at the end of the year off the taxes. Working on my wife's Expedition...........which is registered and insured as a company vehicle..........also gets written off. So you'd rather have me take my service truck to the dealer for an 8 hour job that turns into 2+ weeks because they can't figure out where to get parts or verify they have the parts in stock before they take it apart???
Just curious where this is coming from..........
 

Monkeywithawrench

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 8, 2019
Messages
281
Location
New Hampshire
I think you've completely missed the point on working on a truck versus just making a payment and driving one while they are still under warranty and then trading them in. Yes you can write your time off but you still lost that time, maybe your time's not very valuable to you but mine is to me.
No, no............I get it. I do!! The expedition and my pickup go to the dealer.
My diesel powered toolbox...........the one I need to go out and make my living............does not go to the dealer. I believe I have outlined a few examples in previous posts here. THE DEALERSHIP DOESN'T CARE. Maybe your big enough that you have plenty of spare trucks that can take the place of a downed truck moribound at the dealership while they fritter away the time waiting for a part to miraculously appear, but I do not have that luxury. I believe DMiller also posted about a truck still sitting at the dealership waiting for parts. Not playing that game.
So if it takes me 2 days of 12 hour days to get my office, mode of transportation, and diesel powered toolbox up and running then I'll do that. Sourcing parts for a Stealership after they've taken a truck apart and didn't have the FORE THOUGHT to check their parts inventory??? I shouldn't have to do that. 2+ weeks to repair a truck, after I sourced the injectors and got them for them, on a 8 hour job?? NO!! I have plenty of examples of these kinds of games.
I do keep my Freightliner M2 as a backup, but switching out the tools, welding machine, etc...............its a pain in the ass.
 

Truck Shop

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2015
Messages
16,548
Location
WWW.
I'm just glad I'm the age I am, some young pi$$ cutter can just take my spot and he is welcome to it.
This world of I needed it yesterday I want it now is getting rather old.

Go to the back of the bus and set in the stink. No business is anymore important than the next,
take a number.
Too many years listening to the whine.
 

suladas

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2016
Messages
1,731
Location
Canada
I think you've completely missed the point on working on a truck versus just making a payment and driving one while they are still under warranty and then trading them in. Yes you can write your time off but you still lost that time, maybe your time's not very valuable to you but mine is to me.

I was unaware that running a new truck on warranty means it doesn't break down and it's amazing if your dealer gives you some kind of guarantee that it won't, I can count quite a few that's not the case. My brother has a 19 western star, it's been back to dealer at least a handful of times before it hit 30,000 miles, and most of the time of course it's not warranty so it's a big bill and lots of downtime, coupled with incompetent mechanics. Granted the problems have mostly been the dump box rig up issues and not the western star truck itself, it's still broken down. And there's millions more just like it. It doesn't matter if the trucks 2 months, 2 years or 20 years old they all break down, the only thing that's changed is new is less of an assurance of reliability, it never has been nor will it ever be a guarantee of reliability. Warranty work is also generally at the bottom of list as it doesn't pay as well as regular repairs. And you're also forced to go to generally the 1 dealer in town, no matter how bad they are and how terrible their hours are like 9-5 m-f.

If someone running a service truck can't run a few years older truck and keep it running without a bunch of breakdowns, I wouldn't hire them to fix my stuff. It would be like a trucker hiring another truck to haul stuff for them, a welder to weld something for them. If your job is fixing equipment/trucks you're not losing a dime fixing your own versus paying a dealer to fix it, or running something really new, in fact the new one is likely costing you more in the end.
 

suladas

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2016
Messages
1,731
Location
Canada
I'm just glad I'm the age I am, some young pi$$ cutter can just take my spot and he is welcome to it.
This world of I needed it yesterday I want it now is getting rather old.

Go to the back of the bus and set in the stink. No business is anymore important than the next,
take a number.
Too many years listening to the whine.

Disagree 100%, good and/or bigger customers get priority 100% of the time. That's how virtually everyone operates and in virtually all cases it makes sense. You think a dealer who has a customer who buys 50 trucks a year compared to the guy who buys 1 ever and the dealer doesn't give priority to the big customer? Of course everyone will. If you don't you're going to loose their business and rightfully so.

If getting a part or a truck fixed meant you were getting paid on friday, and if it didn't get fixed you weren't getting paid for weeks, would you have a different opinion? That's a big difference for self-employed guys, if their truck/equipment is broken down they aren't making money, maybe they can't finish a big job and get paid, or there is penalties for being late, or the general brings in someone else and charges them back a fortune, for not finishing 1 days work you could get charged back $10k easy if not more. Not trying to be a dick but it's something a lot of employees don't understand, they think magically their money will appear every 2 weeks no matter what. If it meant waiting an extra 2 weeks for their next paycheck I bet their mindset would change pretty quick on how much they cared about things like that.

I stopped buying anything from the Takeuchi dealer because they didn't give a chit and parts were always 1-2 weeks and most of the time ordered wrong stuff so I said screw em and I order everything online now and won't give them a penny of my money. The Volvo dealer? Any part in north america here next day for next to nothing. I will buy everything from them even if it costs a bit more because they understand how the business works. If something breaks I want that part now, not next week not in 3-4 days, I want it now. Every time my big hoe has broken down it's in the middle of a job and i'm getting hounded multiple times a day for when it's going to be finished, I won't deal with a supplier who isn't doing everything in their power to get the part as fast as possible. It's not always the case, but I know if they can't make it happen next day (which has only happened once) they tried their best and i'm ok with that.
 
Last edited:

Truck Shop

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2015
Messages
16,548
Location
WWW.
I wrote that just for you, I knew you would be here like a bad smell.
Anyone who goes into business always says {I'm the one taking all the risk}. That's good it's your choice,
but it doesn't mean preferential treatment.
And since I have been with this company we've bought over 400, and guess what those trucks get to
set and wait too.
Customer gets demanding-the slower it will go.
 

Hallback

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2011
Messages
2,306
Location
Aberdeen Wa.
Occupation
Gyppo tower logger
In the last 5 new class 8 trucks I have bought, the only problem was a stripped Squirrel cage in the heater & a multi function switch that was faulty & the switch was 99% driver abuse.
You tell be how missing zero trips & at the dealer a combined 5 hours (ours works til midnight & Saturday so no trips missed there either) is costing me over some clapped out truck with 600k on it that is looser than the town whore?

I get it, 98% of you guys think you are smarter than the engineers, can design it better than those with hundreds of millions for R&D, and can monitor an engine better than one with sensors all over it.

Hell, I'm sure you said that thar damned EeeEffEye ain't never gonna work better than a good ol holley on an elderbrock mannyfold.

Each to their own but there is a reason the most successful companies run modern gear.
Cost per mile.
 

terex herder

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 10, 2017
Messages
1,779
Location
Kansas
For critical equipment I run newer stuff or have duplicates, some both. Not all my stuff is still in warranty, but its newer. With electronic everything, obsolesce of necessary repair parts is a significant issue. I could make or adapt every part in a diesel engine except for the computer. There are even mechanical parts that are unavailable after short product life cycles, but at least they can often be duplicated.
 

Truck Shop

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2015
Messages
16,548
Location
WWW.
At the cost of fuel these days a manual transmission cannot and will not compete with a computerized
automated manual transmission for increased mileage. No lugging and no over speeding, keeps the
rpm right in power band/torque curve. At last service on one of our 2023 T990 Kenworth's with a
EEO 12 spd---Cummins X15 530 Hp moving 100,000 GVW on a regular route back and forth over
the Blue Mountains---Average MPG----5.9 to 6.1.

The ones with manual 4.8 to 5.1.---------No rocket science there.
 
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